It is no secret that the country lacks and desperately needs a series, if not an omnibus volume, of comprehensive ready reference books detailing succinctly facts and figures on various disciplines inclusive of the island’s culture, history, people, religions and beliefs, norms and values and tracts of other relevant and allied information for the benefit of the inquisitive students, policy makers or broadly any researcher worth of his salt.
Arguably, Sri Lanka though a small developing country can boast of many books and tomes written and published on almost all areas of disciplines, knowledge or interest. But a single ready reference book that provides access to facts and figures or any other desired information on any of the broad disciplines has been a long felt need in Sri Lanka.
In what appears to be a laudable initiative to fill that lacuna Siri Ipalawatte and Laurie J. Senanayake, both Sri Lankan expatriates, have just brought out ‘Sri Lanka in a nutshell’. This is the climax of a year-long mission they embarked upon on a conscientious urge to give back something to the country that nurtured them.
Ipalawatte, a former lecturer at the University of Kelaniya and holder of Master of Science degree in Economics from the University of Wales UK had worked in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra for 20 years. Before that he had worked as a statistician in the Department of Census and Statistics back home.
His co-compiler Laurie J. Senanayake, holding a degree of Master of Information Technology from the University of Canberra, Australia had worked as a computer programmer at the same Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.
Drawing upon their rich professional experience as statisticians and culling information and facts from various sources such as books, reports, published and unpublished documents, the Internet etc, they have painstakingly prepared this book in a ‘no frills’, easy to grasp, simple language format.
This publication, needless to say, inadvertently serves another useful purpose. It is no secret that a sizable portion of our younger generation is out of sync with the rich culture and history of the country due mainly to the wrong and inappropriate educational policies in the not too distant past.
The compilers who expect no profits or any other advantages from this exercise have already made available copies to the country’s top decision makers. And they have already started discussions with the state and provincial authorities to make some hundreds of copies of the book available for distribution to school libraries.
Interestingly, a person who happens to lay his or her hands on a copy of this book could regale himself or herself improvising quizzes out of the vast nuggets of information and facts it contains.
"Do you know who built Kala Wewa?” one could ask a friend for instance. "Of course King Dhatusena, stupid”, a smart Alec could very well respond.
"Well can you name the two tanks joined by King Dhatusena to make the mighty Kala Wewa?’
Chances are that even a supposedly Know All would be momentarily stumped or simply not be able to recall the names of the two tanks.
One needs only look under the heading ‘Ancient irrigation’ to glean the quaint information Kala and Balalu, the two reservoirs built earlier that were joined to create Kala Wewa.
By the way, how many of us know or care to remember that it was the same great Dhatusena who built the amazing 87 km-long canal, the Jayaganga with a gradient of six inches to a kilometre on the first 27 kilometres of its course to facilitate the flow of water from Kala Wewa to Tisa Wewa.
All such facts and snippets are there to arouse the interest of the reader besides enriching his or her knowledge about the country.
The experience of the compilers as professional statisticians is reflected in the various forms of statistics presented by them in easy to grasp form. The statistics on distribution of population, 139 years of population growth from 1871 to 2008, population by region, ethnicity or population and density by province etc may prove immensely useful to our legislators, policy makers and researchers.
Apart from that the short monographs on the share market, transport and communication, radio, Television, films and other media among others are refreshing and informative. However, a glaring omission was observed in the column ‘Newspapers currently published in Sri Lanka’. The flagship Sinhala daily, Dinamina, has been dropped from the list.
An equally disturbing omission is the composer of our national anthem, singer and musician the late Ananda Samarakoon who did a monumental service for the cause of Sinhala music.
By the way, the index at the tail end of a book very much in vogue in days gone by seems to have become extinct in modern day book publishing at least in Sri Lanka.
The value of this book would have risen manyfold if a comprehensive index had been incorporated into it. Needless to say, the index arranged as it is alphabetically indicating where in the book reference to a particular person or subject could help the reader to locate a facts or piece of information quicker. Of course, preparing a comprehensive index is a very tedious, costly and time- consuming exercise but worth its value in gold.
Those omissions apart, another positive aspect of the book is its usefulness to foreigners who take an interest in our country.
That apart, those who aspire to sit for public examinations for recruitment to various state services including that of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service may find this book useful as it enriches their general knowledge.
The beauty of this book is anybody who happens to be even idly turning its pages may stand to gain some knowledge about Sri Lanka.
The compilers, true to their pro bono public (for the public good) spirit welcome feedback from the readers. They can be contacted via the publisher or through e-mail: nirmana@grapevine.com.au
They intend to bring out a Sinhala translation of this book soon.
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